The Interfaith Immigration Coalition (IIC) is a partnership of faith-based organizations committed to enacting fair and humane immigration reform that reflects our mandate to welcome the stranger and treat all human beings with dignity and respect. Coalition members work together to advocate for just and equitable immigration policies, educate faith communities, and serve immigrant populations around the country.

If you are part of a congregation or organization currently involved in a local campaign to change ICE hold requests or are interested in being a contact for others in your area who might join you in creating a campaign, sign up to put yourself on the map.
Leaders who are on the map are invited to a monthly conference call with other activists who are currently working on a campaign, immigration attorneys, national faith advocacy staff, and migrant rights organizations staff.

Sign up if you would like to learn more about the campaign and how you can get involved. We will schedule regular conference calls to explain the campaign. In the meantime, you can download the Toolkit and view a video of the webinar.

The increasing merger of federal Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement (ICE) and local and state law enforcement agencies has turned police officers into a primary gateway for deportation and resulted in record-breaking detentions and deportations, serious civil rights and due process concerns, and damaged trust between immigrant communities and local police. The most harmful of the federal programs driving this merger is the so-called “Secure Communities” program or S-comm, where the fingerprints of persons booked at local, state and federal jails are automatically sent to ICE to determine their legal status. If someone is flagged as undocumented, ICE sends a “detainer request” asking the local authorities to hold the person until ICE can take them into custody for deportation. Notably, S-Comm operates pre-conviction, meaning that low-priority, non-violent offenders and even the wrongfully accused are being funneled into this program, needlessly separating hundreds of thousands of families.

Stopping S-Comm

Communities across the country have resisted S-comm, scoring significant local victories with a number of counties and states formally deciding to opt out of the program. However, ICE insists that S-Comm is mandatory. As a result strategy has shifted from getting state and local authorities to opt out of S-Comm to getting local counties and other jurisdictions to not honor ICE detainer requests. S-Comm cannot work if local authorities do not honor detainer requests; and local authorities are in no way obligated to do so.

Teams made up of communities of faith, migrant rights organizations, and community organizations have played a major role in turning the tide against S-Comm in Santa Clara County California, Washington, D.C., and Cook County Illinois. In all these communities local officials were persuaded to change their response to Hold Requests from ICE. As a result, trust is being restored in those communities.

We need more teams if we are going to restore trust all across the country.

We believe faith communities have an important role in helping to persuade local officials to not honor every ICE detainer request. Please join the campaign.

As people of faith, we believe first and foremost that immigrants have inherent dignity in which their civil and human rights should always be respected. Religious leaders from a variety of traditions have publicly called for humane treatment of immigrants and have condemned the separation of immigrant families and the devastating impact immigration enforcement tactics have had on wives, husbands and children alike.

Please see below map of point people for each coalition and campaign. Through this resource you can get in contact with a local organizer and find out how to get more involved in your region to Restore TRUST!